What fuel do you run on? What keeps you going? It’s important to look at how you are funding your life, what is your energy source, your motivational fuel? One of the most often used fuels is adrenaline. When we do not have a fund of well-being and naturally produced energy, the body turns on adrenaline to try and make up for it. This kind of energy leaves you “wired and tired.” When running on adrenaline you feel sped up, hyper-alert, and anxious. It’s hard to sleep and you never have that relaxed, well-rested feeling. If you are pushing past natural limits, you are likely running on adrenaline. Yet this […]

I had a startling thought this morning: Maybe I don’t recognize “energy” that doesn’t have a little “push” in it, either adrenalized by a stressed physiology or from the Pusher in my head. How do I get to the “relaxed energy” my naturopath keeps talking about? I wrote about not tapping out your energy reserves in an earlier blog, Keeping Your Bucket Full, and the importance of nurturing a sense of well being. The larger topic is so important that I find myself returning to it. Good energy is a precious substance that needs to be well tended. Oh, there seem to be a few rare high-energy people who can […]

Many of the people I work with are not highly equipped to set and defend boundaries—to stand their ground. This can happen for many reasons, usually starting in childhood. Do any of these fit for you? You learned to overlook your needs and boundaries, as they were overlooked. Boundaries? What boundaries? You felt you’d be clobbered if you didn’t accommodate an unstable caretaker. You learned instead to stay out of sight, or when cornered to show your underbelly, in effect saying, “I’m not a danger. Don’t hurt me!” You modeled yourself after an adult who was disempowered and accommodating. Your only memory of someone seeming powerful was red-in-the-face angry, yelling […]

Part of the magic of therapy is that a good therapist creates a container for your experience. This container becomes a safe space. It is both a physical space and an emotional space. It is imperative that the client experience the therapist as an ally who will not hurt her. The client must be able to relax her defenses so that whatever has been kept at bay can now emerge. In this way, the therapist provides a “holding environment.” This is what good friends do as well. When we share our ups and downs with our friends, they are helping to “hold” the experience. Part of becoming more autonomous is […]

Many of us get stuck in control strategies. I’m going to help you identify whether you are a “controller” and what costs this has for you. I’ll connect the dots between control and trauma and also a larger transpersonal/spiritual view that helps us soften our need for control. Recognizing Controllers It’s a bit sensitive to point out to those with a controlling strategy their need for control (unless they agree to it or are in recovery). It is also a bit restrictive to label someone by their strategy, but this what all descriptions of types do. Here are 7 pointers to help you identify controllers. Controllers have trouble letting go […]

One of the biggest lessons on any journey of deep psychological or spiritual growth is letting go. We let go not just once, but over and over again, in hundreds of ways. Letting go feels dangerous to the ego. In many ways the ego is built of our strategies for being in control, and some of these are quite helpful. To be able to execute a plan, control impulses, or make a graceful movement requires some control. Yet too much control often means there is no flexibility or aliveness. Plans becomes rigid, as do our bodies. In my practice as a therapist I see more problems from over-control than from […]

It is rare that we fully recognize things as they are. This is because we are constantly looking through filters, which comes with the territory of being a human with a particular history and personality. Much spiritual work as well as psychological healing involves piercing these filters and coming into relationship with things as they are. Of course the bestselling book, Loving What Is, by Byron Katie comes to mind when thinking about this. Accepting, not just in resignation as an inconvenient truth, but actually being in alignment with What Is becomes the work. Finding the Filter Most of the time we are looking through our filters rather than at […]

Everyone has bad days. I define a bad day as when unexpected, unwanted things happen (and distinguish these from bad hair days below). Things go wrong. Usually it is a series, although one big event can certainly color a whole day. On our good days, when we are “well-resourced,” we can cope with one of these events without too much disturbance. If we have several of these, or are not well-resourced to begin with, we begin to fall further and further into an internal state of disorganization. How do we to keep this from becoming a landslide? Here are 6 tips for dealing skillfully with bad days: Accept it as […]

As with all concepts, we look at “responsibility” through a lens. Many of us think of “taking responsibility” as doing what we should do, regardless of what we want to do. It’s doing what we think is “right.” Kinda boring. Others focus their efforts on responsibility for others, which sometimes is necessary (with children, for example), and sometimes becomes caretaking that robs them of self-responsibility. Self-responsibility is nothing more or less than owning your life. Owning, for example, the aspects of your life you tend to avoid and let slide, and owning whatever mess results. It is taking responsibility for your unhappiness, and for living more of your potential. Rather […]

Just as we have a relationship with each aspect of life, we have a relationship with change, although we seldom think about it that way. Taking a closer look at this relationship may prove illuminating. Change Embracers You may know people who say they love change, and their lives reflect that. They change careers, move to different parts of the country, try on different identities (not quite as often as they change their hairstyle, but often enough), move into new social circles, and let their interests roam freely. Since life itself is constantly in a process of change, to have some major changes in direction in your individual life is […]